September 29, 2015 (New York/San Francisco/London) – Financial innovation firm R3 today announced that an additional 13 of the world’s leading banks have joined its partnership to design and apply distributed ledger technologies to global financial markets. The news comes two weeks after R3 and nine initial member banks publicly announced the formation of their distributed ledger initiative.

This addition, which takes the total number of banks collaborating on the project to 22, includes Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Citi, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, National Australia Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, SEB, Societe Generale and Toronto-Dominion Bank.

These institutions will join Barclays, BBVA, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Royal Bank of Scotland, State Street and UBS in developing commercial applications for this emerging technology in the global financial services industry. The project will also seek to establish consistent standards and protocols for the technology in order to facilitate broader adoption and gain a network effect.